THE tendency to give too long examinations is quite as evident this year as it has ever been. The subject is a very old one, but the annoyance is so great that the only way to correct it eventually, seems to be to speak of it periodically. Examinations can never be a very perfect test of what a man knows; hence, a few questions answered well are, in the majority of cases, a much better test than a number answered hurriedly. It is an impossibility, for instance, to do justice to fifteen questions, "and write as fully as you can in answer to each question," as was required in an examination this week. All of the questions may be answered, indeed, by writing under pressure for the three hours, but the answers cannot be full, or carefully stated, and there is, of course, no opportunity for reading over and correcting what has been written. Other cases, in language courses, when enough translation is required to take two hours, besides questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered in an hour and a half, have occurred as usual; and it is a curious fact that these long papers are almost always given by those instructors who habitually prolong their recitations beyond the hour allotted to them. A fair paper seems to be one that the fastest writers can answer in less than three hours, and one in which the important questions are placed first, if the order of a paper means any thing. Where full answers are wished, it seems most reasonable to require careful answers to such of the questions in order as the time allows, and to judge of what might have been done with all the questions by the careful answers to a few. This is the practice with a few professors, and it is certainly as satisfactory to the students as to them.